What's missing, unit-wise?

[Dr.Null]

I think there should be two upgrade options for each unit. (...) A sort of militia upgrade for each era. Super cheap, but lets your units be relevant at least.

I know it's already possible to have multiple upgrade options for a single unit, like how an Axeman can show upgrades to Maceman, Grenadier, and Machine Gun; or how a Crossbow can show upgrades for Rifleman and Grenadier at the same time.

What would be the characteristics of the Militia units compared to contemporary units? Which techs would fuel them?

 

[ChaosSlayer]

To me, what is missing unitwise is more a mechanics thing than individual units. It would be nicer for a smoother transition sure, but what always bothered me a bit about civ games is the way unit upgrade works. I think there should be two upgrade options for each unit. The standard, where you completely refit the unit with state of the art weapons and training which is fairly expensive sure, but there should be a second: the equivalent of having your axement go down to walmart and buy the super saver hunting rifle. A sort of militia upgrade for each era. Super cheap, but lets your units be relevant at least. Then the militia unit for the era, for money can always be upgraded further in to the regimented state of the art unit if need be.

this is pretty easy to implement. all you need is to design a chart what will be upgrading to what

 

[damerell]

The standard, where you completely refit the unit with state of the art weapons and training which is fairly expensive sure, but there should be a second: the equivalent of having your axement go down to walmart and buy the super saver hunting rifle. A sort of militia upgrade for each era. Super cheap, but lets your units be relevant at least. Then the militia unit for the era, for money can always be upgraded further in to the regimented state of the art unit if need be.

I think the most serious difficulty with this is that you can't rely on the AI to upgrade units in a sane fashion. Consider the one gameplay change that "Better BUG AI" does make - to stop the AI upgrading its entire infantry force to Anti-Tanks.

 

[Tlalynet]

Peasant Militia

6

Cheap upgrade for warriors\archers\chariots\spears\axes

Available with Civil service


Minuteman

12 (gernaders get their 50% bonus against these)

Available with Nationalism and Rifling

Conscript

15

Available with Industrialism

Peacekeeping force

22

Available with, I dunno, composts and computers? Sometime around when Mech INF and modern armour are around.

They all get +50% city defence.

 

[traius]

+50% is very high. That would make your peasant militia all superior to longbows on non-hill cities, and equal in hill cities. You do have to go 1 tech deeper, but I think you were hoping for cheap filler and not a unit replacement, which as described they would. Also, minutemen would be superior at defending cities vs grenadiers than their riflemen counterpart. Conscripts and peacekeepers are weak enough compared to their counterparts that this doesn't happen to them.

 

[Tlalynet]

Minutemen would be weak vs gernaders, so they'd be on par with riflemen when defending cities.

I wasn't thinking of the peasant malitia when I tacked on the bonus, and I agree it's too high.

I was actually thinking of having +50% when defending an uncultured city, but +25% of that comes from the fortify bonus, so I should have said +25%... Peasant Militia still have too much of a bonus. They can't really have lower base STR, they'd be useless as an upgrade for axes ect... I wouldn't want them to replace LBows though... They're kind of in a place with all the niches filled.

 

[digitalcraft]

Peasant Militia

6

Cheap upgrade for warriors\archers\chariots\spears\axes

Available with Civil service


Minuteman

12 (gernaders get their 50% bonus against these)

Available with Nationalism and Rifling

Conscript

15

Available with Industrialism

Peacekeeping force

22

Available with, I dunno, composts and computers? Sometime around when Mech INF and modern armour are around.

They all get +50% city defence.

This is a good start. I'm not sure about +50% city defense, that might be a bit high. If they get a bonus, suddenly they're a strategic item to upgrade to. Might want to avoid that, make them just a normal no bonus guy.

 

[Cristoval]

I would like to play a mode where you have to kill the civ's hero or leader which is represented as a unit on the game map. So leader units.

 

[Culture Bomb]

What about air-dropped nukes that must be carried by a bomber so have a significant chance of interception?

I realise that historically, the time gap between the first nukes and the first ICBMS probably isn't enough to be significant in Civ terms, but it would be quite interesting to play with nukes that aren't such good guaranteed destruction.

 

[Kid R]

Just a thought (skimmed the thread, didn't read it all ) A pacing problem Civ has is that the 20th century produced such a huge quantity of new war tech and machinery - arguably as much as the whole rest of history put together. Everyone has their "favourite" but there's just so many different things - the game designers must have had a real tough job choosing a few to dot around the modern tech tree at the same density to how the other units are in the previous 3900 years!

They must have thought a new modern unit with every tech would bewildering to play .... hmm, just thinking about it now it might be fun and add some spice to the modern era. Also historically realistic too. Maybe the real problem was drawing all the art for so many units

My 2 euro on the OP is that the current treb-cannon gap is not large at all, either in number of techs or unit ability. Ships - I'm not sure there is quite room to fit in a whole nother tier. Maybe if they moved the oil ships later in the tree and made them stronger. But in practice Civ navies are a minority interest, right?

 

[damerell]

Ships - I'm not sure there is quite room to fit in a whole nother tier. Maybe if they moved the oil ships later in the tree and made them stronger. But in practice Civ navies are a minority interest, right?

That is the essence of the Dr. Null proposal, except absent making them stronger because the Destroyer's 30 is already enough to squish Frigates flat.

They are a minority interest, but I'm not sure why. Control of the seas is a devastating weapon against coastal cities, with pillaging and blockades a far quicker way to damage the enemy than slow-paced land pillages - and when you have tanks but no mobile artillery, navies can speed up a campaign enormously both by direct bombardment and by shipping artillery to where it is needed. I always aim to both circumnavigate the globe and to have a strong navy.

 

[tdy99]

Some kind of offensive archery unit. I always thought it was silly that archers are purely defensive in the game since they were part of any self-respecting army in the middle ages, not just castle garrisons.

If I were redesigning the game myself, I'd take away siege units' collateral damage and instead create some kind of collateral inflicting bow unit to fill the role of archers on the battlefield.

 

[Dr.Null]

Some kind of offensive archery unit. I always thought it was silly that archers are purely defensive in the game since they were part of any self-respecting army in the middle ages, not just castle garrisons.

If I were redesigning the game myself, I'd take away siege units' collateral damage and instead create some kind of collateral inflicting bow unit to fill the role of archers on the battlefield.

Now THIS is a neat idea.

I think that Cannons and later ought to have both (city-bombard and field-collateral).

You'd give Mounted units a Flank Attack vs. Archery units? And reduce the cost for Catapults & Trebs to like half of what it is now, since they're roughly half as useful?

 

[Kallikrates]

I think that slightly outdated units could be quite realistically compared to hardly trained militia, e.g. axemen and spearmen (peasant with forks and flails...) compared with pikes and maces, musketeers with grenadiers and rifles, rifles with infantry etc. So this seems an unnecessary complication. To be realistic un-trained militia should also lose all special promotions and not be entitled to any or only very few promotions.
Expensive upgrades seem fair to me for warmongering and defensive units do often quite well, even when technically outdated, especially longbows.

I understand that many do not like the gaps, especially with naval units. But this is not a wargame, and as someone pointed out already, there are quite a few units many players usually skip anyway, especially on normal speed. (I hardly ever build musketmen).
The thing I personally miss most, because it makes for odd stacks (cavalry + catapult), is an early cannon.

 

[damerell]

(I hardly ever build musketmen).

OCCers will with distressing regularity, because it's easy to find yourself with no Iron or Copper - and your stable finances mean that you can generally hang on with Musketmen until you tech Rifling and then upgrade the lot.

 

[Steamwerks]

Although "bombard" was on my list, I'm not sure castles and walls need to get any worse.

Castles and walls are indispensable on higher difficulties, and with stone or protective, they're some of the best investments you can make.

Anyways, I think the trick to making sure bombards don't instantly render castles obsolete, is to give them a low combat strength and bombard value. In this capacity, you might bring some along with your trebs in order to speed up castle/wall bombardment, but you probably would not use them for cultural defenses or direct assaults unless desperate. Working off the treb stats as a base, let's say you lower the city attack bonus of the treb to 50% and reduce its bombard percentage to ~10% (compared to trebs, then: 25% stronger bombard vs. walls, 150% stronger vs. castles, 37.5% weaker vs. cultural). The hammer cost would be somewhat higher, perhaps a rather inefficient 95. Overall, this unit would offer (at gunpowder tech, ofc) access to gunpowder bombardment in an ancillary role to the treb, considerably speeding up castle sieges without consigning them to obsolescence. More broadly speaking, I think the bombard merits an inclusion on sole account of its amazing flavor; the Renaissance just doesn't feel like the Renaissance w/o great, lumbering, often mildly (on occasion, absurdly) impractical cannons!

 

[Tlalynet]

Renaissance just doesn't feel like the Renaissance w/o great, lumbering, often mildly (on occasion, absurdly) impractical cannons!

Here here!

 

[MilesBeyond]

What do people think about something in between Cavalry and Gunships? From Rifling to Advanced Flight is a bit of a gap, and the latter isn't exactly a high-priority tech. Hard to say what would fit, though...

 

[ChaosSlayer]

What do people think about something in between Cavalry and Gunships? From Rifling to Advanced Flight is a bit of a gap, and the latter isn't exactly a high-priority tech. Hard to say what would fit, though...

I used Armored Cars armed with machine guns to fit ww1-ww2 era in my mod

 

[Kid R]

What do people think about something in between Cavalry and Gunships? From Rifling to Advanced Flight is a bit of a gap, and the latter isn't exactly a high-priority tech. Hard to say what would fit, though...

From the mid game onwards it's quite good the way the unit types branch out a bit rather than simply the escalating rock/paper/scissors you get up till that point. So the era you mention gets e.g. airships and fighters and tanks to play around with.

Admittedly it can be annoying having to build whole fresh armies again at that point rather than being able to upgrade existing troops. but then maybe that's realistic for the era, and at least promoted cavalry are useful as fast healers.

It might be good if we could "trade in" old troops for some cash or something rather than just disbanding them. Or maybe if there was a special promotion which allowed a unit with that promotion to be settle as a military instructor rather than being disbanded.